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A Tarnished Sky

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From my new album "The Sky We Share"
Available on 22/06/2018

Follow me here:
https://ardakio2.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/ardakio2/

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I like this. It's very minimal, and I love the repeated note sequence the piano does at 0:28. This, combined with the strings, creates an evocative composition that isn't quite stable musically, and that's what makes it really interesting.

The addition of the electric guitar sounds was a good idea to help "open up" the piece as it progresses while still maintaining the continuum in the background. I just wish the sound design was better - not that strings, piano and electric guitar make for a bad combination in this, but I think a minimal piece like this relying more on atmosphere and emotion needs sounds that are a little more "human", more akin to how they would sound in real life. This is especially apparent in ambient/atmospheric music, where a good portion of evoking the atmosphere does rely on the timbres to create said atmosphere. As noted below, you should consider doing things like varying the velocity, especially in the acoustic instruments so it sounds less "robotic".

I'm reminded a bit of storybased RPGs, especially at the beginning, but I can see this piece working in a game of that sort. Overall, nice job.

Sounds like your piano is all one velocity, and way too much reverb in the mix. Synths stick out as so inauthentic as to betray the composition. I would honestly recommend a switch to electronic instruments only, as it's much easier to get away with cheapo vsts in that vein.

Your drums sound good, surprisingly for me, but at 1:55 your guitar, bass, and other instruments are burying them.

Writing is rough at points. Could probably be better served on different instrumentation. Now, your big rock section is actually pretty interesting, though it sounds copied and pasted. Despite this feel throughout and a lot of progressions sounding either confusing, dissonant, or without direction -- this may be on purpose -- I do see some potential in this piece. 2:36 is a good statement. Wishing it weren't copied and pasted for another two minutes, but it is what it is! The pacing on this section is slow, but not enough to totally screw this section.

Mixing, however, is very rough. At points we have clipping with that big verbed up synth backing your violins. May have mixed better if there were less reverb send, a lot more low cut on 'verb, and less volume on that violin. At 4:40 I see what's causing the problem. That outro synth on its own is way too loud and peaking.

Also would probably like it 5-10 bpm faster. It's turtle speed, and the fastest progression we usually hear is a quarter, quarter, quarter, quarter, half, half. Really easy to lose attention.

Nevertheless, not a bad piece. Just needs a few touchups!

Wasn't a huge fan of this. I'll admit to having some bias due to whatever software you're using just not sounding very good, but the composition here isn't exactly stellar either. It's very slow moving, and doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

Credits & Info

Artist

Listens
342
Downloads
4
Score
Waiting for 3 more votes

Uploaded
Jun 15, 2018
5:51 PM EDT
Genre
Indie
File Info
Song
4.8 MB
5 min 15 sec

Licensing Terms

You are free to copy, distribute and transmit this work under the following conditions:

Attribution:
You must give credit to the artist.
Noncommercial:
You may not use this work for commercial purposes. *
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If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting creation only under a license identical to this one.

*Please contact me if you would like to use this in a commercial project. We can discuss the details.